5 ‘Message’ Albums You Should Own!…According to Questlove

The Roots Questlove tells Vibe.com which albums with a message you should have in your record collection.

O’Jays – Ship Ahoy

“Way before Alex Haley, Gamble and Huff made side one [of this album] about the slave trade. Even though I was 5 when that record came out I was very aware and well informed of how we came in from Africa. That was a risky thing to do in ‘73. Nobody was writing about the slave trade in pop music especially for a new label trying to find success on the pop charts after the success of the OJ’s “Backstabbers”. We tried to do a song off this album, “Don’t call me brother”, but it would have been a duet.”